Friday, August 1, 2014

Call our lawyers.

Oh that uppity president, how to rid ourselves of this
embarrassment?Forget about two
elections — let’s sue.It’s time to
finally challenge the imperial presidency,
a travesty on its own but all the more so with this interloper, this illegitimate
holder of our office.What are the grounds for this suit authorized by the House?That Barack Obama has subverted Congress in
using his pen — his executive orders — to alter passed legislation.Let’s not even mention that the specific
legislation in question is laughably the ACA, their Enemy #1.

To some degree we should be grateful to the Tea
Party dominated House.They are
providing an opportunity to consider and assess White House abuse of power and
the so-called Imperial Presidency.We’ve often been told both by legislators and
some in the media that the imperiousness of our chief executives has reached
new heights of late.Interestingly no
one really challenges that notion, one that has no factual basis — quite the
contrary.As it happens, we do have an
objective measure of relative imperiousness, one that has been tracked from the start:
the executive order.George Washington
issued a modest eight, more than any other until Andrew Jackson who issued
twelve.That number swelled dramatically
with U.S. Grant (217) a level that was not reached again until it was dwarfed
by Teddy Roosevelt (1,081) who in turn was topped by his cousin Franklin (3,522).

To put Obama’s executive order record in context,
let’s look at what happened in the 20th Century beginning with TR
and ending with Bill Clinton.In that
period, 13,499 executive orders were issued with FDR (3,522) setting a still
standing record and George HW Bush with the fewest (166).On average the seventeen presidents of the
last century each issued 794 executive orders but given the inclusion of both
Roosevelts and varying terms of service, that number is clearly
misleading.A more telling one is how
many each president issued in a single year — 124.Since it’s the House Republicans who want to
sue for what they claim is presidential overreach, let’s finally look at the
record of recent Republican presidents: Ronald Reagan and the two Bush’s.
Together they averaged 279 executive orders each or 41 for every year in
office.

Drum roll please.Barack Obama, the “imperial president” worthy of a lawsuit — the first
of its kind — has issued a total of 183 executive orders at the rate of 33 per
year.This compares with an average of 794
for the 20th Century presidents (124 a year) and 279 (41 each year)
for his three Republican predecessors including the GOP’s conservative hero
Ronald Reagan.In fact, when it comes to
so-called “legislating on his own” Obama does it less often than any chief
executive since Theodore Roosevelt.Let’s repeat that, “less than any”.

My apologies for all the numbers but they explain my
outrage about the action taken this week, one that fails to meet the most basic
smell test.Indeed, what the House did
was no less than an election year publicity stunt, one that may never be
followed by tangible legal action.Their
aim, one that has been echoed by Senator McConnell in the upper chamber, is to
undo this presidency, if not in the polling booth where they have been unsuccessful
then in causing paralysis in Washington.What we’re witnessing in America is not an imperial presidency, not
presidential overreach, but a politics of hate.Bill Clinton, another interloper, was the object of such hate when he
had the audacity to run for and be twice
elected president.The specter of a
fabricated Whitewater “scandal” raised its head even before the he took his
oath of office.George W. Bush who,
unlike Barack Obama, actually did enter office under a cloud of illegitimacy,
engendered if not hate then certainly impassioned resentment.It seems Democrats are not quite as good at
hate as Republicans.And then this
chief executive, who carries not merely the burden of not coming of one of our
political royal families but from the
wrong kind of family, is threatened with a
bogus lawsuit.

Looking ahead to November, we’re told that
Republicans have a better than even chance of taking over the Senate and, of
course, making further gains in the House.This would suggest that their theater and relentless campaign of
misinformation is working.It leaves me
dumbfounded.I am outraged by this
systematic attempt to undo an elected president and to put all of our needs —
and there are many — on hold while those being paid to do “the people’s work”
spend most of their time saying “no” while attempting to deconstruct.Where is the outrage of the American
people?Are we to assume that people
like Ted Cruz speak for them, that total gridlock is what they want?Are we to assume that, despite all our
advances, they still see large swathes of the population as second or third
class citizens?The current atmosphere would
suggest that is so. i continue to hope it is not.

For the moment, as you can see, I’m mad as hell.Think I’ll call my lawyers.

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About Me

A branding consultant with decades of experience working with large global clients and brands, he now serves primarily young startup companies. Beginning his professional life as a rabbi of a large urban congregation, he has watched the numbers of the religiously unaffiliated grow in the years since leaving the pulpit. His book, Transcenders: Living beyond religion and the religion wars (available on Amazon) considers this phenomenon. Beyond his consulting practice Prinz spends much of his time writing, including this Blog. He posts to "Beyond All That" only when there is something to say that might add value to the conversation.